Land of Marvels

by Barry Unsworth

  He had spoken with increasing passion, and now he turned and looked at her. In Constantinople were the blinkered ones, the British authorities who sat at their desks and allowed this monstrous thing to happen. Letters were no good. He would go in person; he would confront these people. He and the present ambassador had been at school together; it counted for something. He would make them see that it was not just a mound of earth that was in jeopardy but a part of the story of humanity. He would show them that he was no mere futile dabbler but someone to be reckoned with, someone who would not take this outrage lying down.

  He raised his head and fixed her with his eyes. His voice was vibrant with the passion of his rage, released now after long repression. He saw that her eyes were bright and she was flushed.

  “But it is splendid,” she said, and quite unexpectedly, in the midst of his fury, he was carried back in memory to the May evening four years ago, when they had met for the first time.

  He had talked about an excavation at Tell Barsip on the Euphrates, from which he had just returned. He had spoken with enthusiasm and had seen the warmth of this reflected in her face. Encouraged, he had confessed to her his intention of leading an expedition himself after these years as an assistant, and putting all he had into it. “But how absolutely splendid!” she had said. Looking at her across the table, at her bright eyes, her mouth that smiled upon him, he had felt they were both bathed in a visionary light. There were others there at the restaurant table, but they were in some area of dimness, excluded. Pagani’s, the restaurant—all the rage in those days. They had been to hear a lecture at the Royal Geographical Society given by the American explorer Robert Peary, who had reached the North Pole in the previous year. She had been disappointed in Peary, he remembered now; he had not lived up to her expectations, he had spoken in an ordinary kind of way, making the whole thing sound more like a well-organized business trip than a feat of endurance. Indignation in her voice. It had occurred to Somerville later—considerably later, when that light no longer enveloped them—that he had been lucky in the occasion; he had served to repair this disappointment, restore her faith in the heroic ideal . . .

  “You will prevail, I know it,” she said. “You speak as you did when you first told me of your decision to give up that dreary business and venture everything on your dream of exploration and discovery.” She sat forward a little now, and the wrap fell from her shoulders. “You are still that man. Nothing and no one can withstand you when you are truly yourself.” She held out her arms to him. “My love, come here beside me.”

  Her body radiated heat; the skin of her face and arms was hot to his touch as if she were burning with his own fire of purpose. Her will, her wish for him to conquer and triumph, fastened on him now again, proof against all disappointment. But he knew, as she panted beneath him, as his own excitement mounted, that the man lying between her thighs had ceased very early in their life together to be truly himself with her and would never now be able to find the words to explain why this was so.

  5.

  “Yes,” the Ambassador said, “he and I were at school together. In point of fact he fagged for me in my last year there. He reminded me of it in his telegram. Naturally, it makes a difference.”

  “Naturally.” Lord Rampling looked straight before him through the widely opened windows of the veranda, across the ruffled, glittering expanse of water. The Bosporus was almost at its narrowest here, the landing stages and gardens of the houses opposite, on the Asian side, clearly visible. He knew which school it was, having spent some time prior to this meeting in reading a summary of the Ambassador’s career, but he could not for the life of him see what difference it made. “In days gone by,” he said, “in the old days of the Padishah, the ladies in their private boats would make assignations with their lovers across the water by using a system of signals based on the tilt of their parasols, left, right, straight up. Married women, you know—they had to be careful. I’ve always regarded it as an example of the way restrictions increase ingenuity, sharpen the brain and the senses. I don’t know what the code was, of course, but I have always taken it for granted that the vertical position was crucial. You couldn’t be more definite than that, could you?”

  He could not remember now whether this signaling system had at some time in his long life of anecdotes been related to him or whether he had just invented it on the spur of the moment. His words had in any case been designed mainly to ruffle his guest, whose correctness of manner and orthodox official attitudes, so typical of British diplomats and the whole Foreign Office establishment, had irritated him from the start of their acquaintance. Glancing sideways, he saw that the Ambassador’s long and rather horsey face had not managed much in the way of a smile. Good. Why did one go in for these puerile games? He sighed, thinking of his own parasol, which for a good many years now had been unreliable to say the least. It was a very audible sigh; these days random thoughts, whether disquieting or reassuring, brought out sounds from him, sighs, little grunts or groans, even chuckles. Never words, however—words he was always careful with.

  “No indeed, definite enough, certainly.” The Ambassador swallowed some of his vermouth. To a remark like that if uttered by an equal or subordinate, he would have made no reply and so delivered a snub. But it would be most unwise to risk offending this man, who held no office of state but was much more powerful and influential than himself, to say nothing of his hugely greater wealth. Rampling had more capacity for making trouble, if he chose, than almost anyone. Complicating the matter was the Ambassador’s awareness that the other would not care much for his disapproval whether this was expressed in speech or silence. Or anyone else’s, for that matter. There was the title, yes, but the fellow was simply not a gentleman.

  “Imagine your feelings,” Rampling said, “looking across the water, watching out for the right tilt.”

  “Wouldn’t do to get it wrong,” the Ambassador said. On the wall before him was a framed picture he had seen somewhere before, Britannia being handed the Crown of the Sea by someone he thought might be Neptune, with three allegorical figures in attendance, garish in the sunshine that filled the veranda. Commerce, Navigation . . . Reflected sunlight prevented him from reading the third. It was the first real day of spring, and a servant had been summoned to open the great bay windows that gave a view over the water. From where he was sitting he could see terns wheeling above the ruffles of the current, plunging down for fish. A fisherman’s paradise. For a moment, oppressed by the physical presence of his host—the man seemed to take up all the space—he felt a sharp desire to be at his country place in Northumberland, in midstream, casting over the brown water. “I don’t think I have ever seen another waterway so constantly in prey to currents as this one,” he said.

  “No, you see it more particularly here as the channel narrows. There is one tide of fresher, swifter water, coming down from the Black Sea, and another saltier and heavier, making an undercurrent in the opposite direction.” Rampling smiled suddenly, a smile not unattractive but with something painful in the suddenness of it, a sort of jovial snarling. “Equally matched,” he said. “One has dash, the other has weight. No winners, no losers.”

  “The markets of this city will never lack for fish, so much is certain.”

  No reply to this was forthcoming; Rampling was still gazing out across the stream. Not for the first time the Ambassador wondered how the man had known of Somerville’s intended visit and why he had wanted to be present, issuing the invitation to luncheon at this ancient and beautiful wooden yali of his. People in the telegraph office? Someone at the embassy passing on information?

  The Ambassador did not lack for a sense of his own worth; his career had brought him respect and authority and latterly a knighthood. But he could not overcome a certain feeling of awe as he glanced at his host’s face in profile and the silence lengthened between them. No one knew for certain how old Rampling was; he claimed different ages at different times, sometimes wildly at odds wit
h the official birthdate, which was 1835. No one knew how much he was worth either.

  The Ambassador too had made inquiries preliminary to this meeting and had refreshed his knowledge of Rampling’s business interests, those that were public and official. They were numerous. He was described in the press as “the shipping magnate,” and there were grounds enough for this description: He was chairman and managing director of the Peninsular and Eastern Steamship Company, chairman and director of the British and Mesopotamian Steam Navigation Company, a director of the Steamship Owners’ Coal Association and of the British and Oriental Marine Insurance Company. He had interests in various other commercial enterprises not directly concerned with shipping: He was vice president of the Suez Canal Company; he sat on the Council of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration. Then there was the more recent involvement in the petroleum industry. This was less clearly defined, but he was believed to have a substantial holding in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which owned 50 percent of the newly incorporated Turkish Petroleum Company.

  The face gave little hint of the strain and anxiety that the control of such complex interests might be thought to bring about, or of any preternatural shrewdness. It was florid and equable, the dark, inquisitive eyes undimmed below disheveled eyebrows. The hair was thick still, though silvered now from the black it had been, and he wore it long. The Ambassador was aware that his own face showed more damage than this one, though he was a good thirty years younger. It was the clothes that gave the fellow away. Take that waistcoat, he thought. Velvet lapels, mother-of-pearl buttons, a trimming of gold thread along the seams. It was not the waistcoat of a gentleman. His watch chain was too thick and too golden. And the jacket, black velvet, hanging loose—he was wearing a smoking jacket to entertain people to luncheon!

  “Somerville will be here fairly soon, I suppose,” the Ambassador said. “We shall have to do what we can for him. I know you take the matter seriously, otherwise you would have not given it your valuable time.” He had in fact been considerably surprised at the interest that Rampling was taking in what must be to him, after all, a minor matter; he was grateful too, aware that his own powers of intervention did not extend far.

  Rampling turned his head to regard his guest, as if with sudden curiosity. “I haven’t really arranged this for the sake of Somerville,” he said after a moment. “Of course I know that you and he were at school together, and this makes a difference and so on, but I must tell you frankly that it doesn’t make much difference to me.”

  “But I understood you had decided to use your influence on his behalf. Representing as you do the British bondholders in the Ottoman Public Debt Administration, we thought you might have a word or two with your German counterpart here in the city. Verb sap, you know, a word to the wise.”

  Rampling was silent for a short while, invaded by a certain sense of wonder. This inveterate belief in the old system, the network of favors. A few words dropped in the right place, to the right person. Could they not hear the marching feet? But no—a bit of schoolboy Latin, a pat on the back, and everything would be set right again, the world arrested in its collapse. “Nothing can be done to help Somerville,” he said. “In 1903, when the Germans obtained the concession for the railway from Sultan Abdul Hamid, they also acquired the right to operate mines within a zone of twenty kilometers on either side of the line. They can use the land as they like, whether it is owned by the Ottoman government or in private hands, for whatever they need in the way of construction, quarries, gravel pits, sand, timber. Free of charge, sir.”

  “I am familiar with the terms of the 1903 convention,” the Ambassador said rather stiffly.

  “But do you realize what it means? The Germans know—we all know—that there is oil in great quantities in Mesopotamia. No drilling has been done yet, but they know it is there. They have planned the route with this in mind. The other piece of knowledge that we share with them is that war between us looks ever more likely. Do you think, in these circumstances, in this March of 1914, that they will agree to shift the route for the sake of an obscure archaeologist without financial backing, working on an excavation that has so far yielded precious little of interest? Yes, I have been into the thing, and believe me, his case is hopeless. What inducement could we offer them? Mesopotamia is riddled with archaeologists, British, French, German, American. They will all be running for cover before long. No good appealing to the Turks. In the event of war they will almost certainly go in on the German side. In that case the line will be a vital supply route for them, the only rapid way of transporting men and matériel to defend their possessions adjoining the Gulf.”

  The Ambassador had two views about the likelihood of the war, one private and the other official; though quite different, they were of equal value since both depended equally on the occasion and the company. “I wouldn’t say that war is inevitable,” he said. “The government does not take that view. Our relations with Berlin and Vienna are cordial, and we continue to make every effort that they should remain so. We all have much to gain from this railway, which will open Mesopotamia to international commerce. If you don’t believe we can help Somerville, I find it difficult . . . I mean, why have you—”

  “Why have I invited you here? Well, as I say, it is not really for Somerville’s sake. I have other reasons, rather more important. I’d like to explain them to you; it’s really why I wanted you to come early.”

  “By all means.”

  “Still on the subject of oil, which I think you will agree is more in the forefront than archaeology as things stand at present—not much good trying to fuel our ships with potsherds and arrowheads, eh?”

  “Er, no.”

  “I don’t know if you have seen charts of the oil prospects in the vilayets of Baghdad and Mosul? I thought perhaps not. I have one with me, prepared on the basis of the most recent information we possess.”

  Without needing to rise, Rampling was able to reach to the small glass-topped table beside his chair and take up the single sheet of paper that lay there, now noticed for the first time by the Ambassador. “You will see the cluster of black dots,” he said, passing over the paper, “thick in the middle, thin at both ends, going from Tikrit to Mosul on either side of the Tigris.”

  “I see them, yes.”

  “They are definitely ascertained prospects with evidence of extensive deposits. Westward from this no one has taken much of a look, but there are indications; there are swamps of pitch where the oil has leaked up onto the surface. The probabilities are strong that the oil fields continue here, particularly in the region between the Khabur and Belikh rivers.” He paused a moment, fixing the Ambassador with a steady gaze. “That is precisely the area where your school chum is digging.”

  “We were not chums exactly,” the Ambassador said with a certain caution. “I was already in the sixth form when he—”

  “But he would be likely to think of you as a friendly presence, someone well disposed, wouldn’t he? It is not only the school connection, important though we both know that is. You represent British authority here, you are His Majesty’s accredited envoy to the Sublime Porte. He is likely to trust in what you say.”

  “I suppose so, yes.”

  “He would be less likely to trust me. I have no official standing. I have an aura of wealth, which makes things awkward, you know. And in any case, I’m not sufficiently British in my ways.”

  As if to illustrate this, he leaned forward and laid a hand on the Ambassador’s knee, to the latter’s acute embarrassment. To make matters worse, the fellow was wearing scent; he smelled of rosewater or something of the kind. “I am afraid I don’t quite see where this is tending,” he said.

  “We want to send a man there, an expert in petroleum geology, to have a look around. The man we have in mind is an American named Elliott. He comes with first-rate testimonials from Standard Oil, with which he has been working in a position of trust for several years. He is one of the foremost experts in the field. I have talke
d to him on two occasions, and I am satisfied that he is just the man we need. He is in London at present, at an address known only to me. There are rival interests involved, you understand, we don’t want anyone else to get wind of this appointment.”

  “I see, yes. Well, it sounds a very good idea.”

  “There are problems, however. He must have freedom of movement, you see. At the same time he must not attract any particular attention or have his activities watched by the Turkish authorities. I mean, he won’t want to have a squad of gendarmes breathing down his neck, will he?”

  “No, hardly, but I don’t see—”

  “He must go there in some other capacity, one that will not arouse any particular suspicion. As we were saying earlier, Mesopotamia is crawling with archaeologists, one more or less won’t cause any comment whatever.”

  “You mean he should go in the guise of an archaeologist?”

  “He must go as an archaeologist, as an assistant to Somerville.”

  “To the same site? But then Somerville will have to vouch for him. Why should he do that?”

  Rampling leaned forward with a curiously gentle and lingering movement. For a moment the Ambassador thought he was going to have a hand on his knee again. Instead his host reached out and took the chart of the oil fields from his hands. “That is where you come in,” he said. “You assure Somerville that you will exert every effort on his behalf and that you see a distinct possibility . . . no, a strong likelihood, that these efforts will bear fruit, that wheels will be set in motion both literally and figuratively to save his excavation.”

  There was a short silence, during which they could hear the screaming of the terns that plunged and plunged again into the seething shoals and never seemed gorged. Then the Ambassador said, “I see, yes. And in return for these assurances he will agree to pretend that this geologist has come as his assistant.”